RUNNER is one of the most entertaining and enjoyable books I’ve read this year. Steve Berry’s blurb for the book really sums it up, “This is thriller done right. It literally begs to be read on one sitting. I said it before and I’ll say it again: Patrick Lee is the real deal.”

THE GREY BASTARDS is one of the best fleshed out fantasy worlds I have read this year. Hell, it’s one of the few fantasy books I finished this year. Jonathan French is a talented storyteller and created a cast of characters I enjoyed following.

Meg Gardiner doesn’t waste any time jumping right into the action with INTO THE BACK NOWHERE. I love how lean her writing is and how she focuses on the meat of the story, sprinkling enough FBI procedural, profiling and intimate looks into her character’s lives to keep you hooked.

We have all seen news footage or read actual accounts of people and their families lives torn apart by the brutality and senseless acts of killers and madmen. I’m sure we all have wanted those monsters found, and justice served so they couldn’t do it again. Well, Terry Goodkind lets us live that fantasy in THE GIRL IN THE MOON through Angela Constantine.

Pendulum is a high octane thriller in the same vein as The Fugitive. Andy Hamdy plunges the reader right into the action from page one with John Wallace coming to conscious with a noose around his neck and his killer still in his apartment, and it goes from bad to devastating for Wallace.

When I began reading John Copenhaver’s DODGING AND BURNING, his language and the way he started the story to me were reminiscent of To Kill A Mockingbird. And like To Kill A Mockingbird this story is about love, family, friendships, and coming of age.

Debut author Ellison Cooper had me up until 3am reading her dark and disturbing novel CAGED.

What I enjoyed about this book, besides being a great story, was how Copper’s vividly described her characters physically. For example with this passage describing a killer.

The man filled the space around him like a mountain forged from solid rock. Thick Jowls hung like slabs of met off his face. Matted blond hair sprung from his head like a bird’s nest. Most terrifying were the killer’s hands, with fingers like muscled eels.

SKYJACK was one of the most thrilling and suspenseful books I read this year. What really impressed me about the book is how K.J. Howe populates her world with so many diverse and interesting characters.

I love Thea Paris, and the best way to sum her up is how her enemies see her from this conversation between Prospero and priest during a confession.

If Michael Crichton and Dan Brown had collaborated on a book MAZE MASTER would be the result. But, Katheleen O’Neal Gear beat them to it. She uses her adept storytelling skills combined with her archaeologist and scientific knowledge to create a superb apocalyptic thriller.